Rich's Ramblings
by Rich Schinnell
Reality check here!: Rich, you're back from your vacation so now get back to work. And, I did not have to be retrained to use my computer. After all, almost two weeks of computer withdrawal can force you to think of other things.<G>. Reading books is great. I had hundreds of messages to read and answer and my home phone answering machine was off-line for the two weeks. I hope that those of you with help line questions did get one of the other volunteers. Even our office staff survived without me. Now that is getting dangerous.<G> It reminds me of the ultimate test for indispensability. To determine how indispensable you are, place your finger in a glass of water, if you see a hole remain when you remove your finger, you're indispensable.
Ok, This column will again mention WINDOWS95. Should I now upgrade now that WINDOWS95 is over a year old?
1. Yes, with the caveat that you have a 486-66, 16 Megabytes of Random Access Memory and 2-300 megabytes of free disk space.
2. No: if you don't.
Seriously, If everything you want to use your computer for is working and there isn't a killer application that you wish to run. NO, if it's working, don't mess with it. Be satisfied and get your work done. Some just have to be on the bleeding edge and they won't listen to me anyway.
Remember that WINDOWS95 is a much more sophisticated beast than DOS/WINDOWS 3.1. It is not as easy to re-install. If you do upgrade, Please get the CD-ROM version as that will make things that much easier. I have a secret that works great. On my 1.2 gig drive divided into C, D and E drives, I copied all the WINDOWS95 files from the CDROM directory/WIN95 to a subdirectory on my E drive called WIN95. This way whenever WINDOWS95 wants to add some driver from the original CD-ROM, and it asks for the diskettes or CD-ROM. I point the prompt to the E:\WIN95 directory and all is well. WINDOWS95 remembers where it was installed from and this sure saves agravation and time.
KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid
Remember that the simpler your system is set up, the fewer problems you will have. If you insist on installing some of the gimmicks that are on the market to make your life easier then at least be prepared to really learn how to install and uninstall WINDOWS95. I use WINDOWS95 almost exclusively and have had very few surprises when I boot the machines. Less is better. The fewer items in your CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT files and your startup folder, the more you will get to enjoy your machine. Try to shy away from all these wonderful utility programs that you just gotta have. Not to demean any of them as some I am sure are great, but: The more programs running simultaneously, the better the chance for a catastrophic system lockup. Most times when a program locks up in WINDOWS95, the three finger salute (CTRL+ALT+ DEL) will bring up a menu that will allow you to end the task and recover. Once in a while some program stomps all over memory and the only solution is to press the reset or red switch.
I don't recommend using any of the diskspace doubling software, especially with the price of 1Gigabyte hard disks now below $200. Additionally, Random Access Memory (RAM) is so low that many new machines are coming standard with 32 megabytes of RAM. Think about increasing your RAM, if you're limited of funds.
For about $20, I picked up a couple of those removable hard
drive devices that allow you to insert a standard IDE or SCSI
hard disk into a carrier, it fits into a standard front bay
opening on your computer and then allows you to interchange hard
disks. I use the carrier as my C drive and can plug in different
C drives to test new products. I have one that is what I call
my master. I never install new software to it until after I have
checked it out pretty well. I have my BBS and Internet software
installed along with my WordPerfect so that I can get some real
work done while allowing me to play around with some of the new
stuff. When I bought another new machine, the first thing that I
purchased was 3 of the removable frames that fit into the front
of my machine. This way, I can test to my heart's content on
one of the spare hard disks and not have a heart attack when it
crashed destroying all the data on the disk. But of course that
will never happen to you as your data is protected by the PC
God.<G> I have a floppy disk all ready to be able to re-boot the
machine including my CD-ROM drivers. This way, I can do a
re-install and get back to square one.
While you're at it, for those of you with tape backup systems, give it a try to see whether your last tape backup worked. Pick some file down in a sub directory and rename it to a temporary name.
Load your tape backup software and try to restore just that file. If it works, congratulations and a warm fuzzy to you. If not then you better get scrambling to find out what is wrong. One thing that I have found is that some tape software gets into trouble if you're running screen savers and/or some other TSR that interferes with the smooth writing of data to your tape. Time to get cracking and test your restore.
Microsoft's User group people were kind enough to send me Visual FoxPro (VFPW) for Windows so that I can get working on converting CPCUG's data base over to Windows. I am an old dBase type person and the VFPW is a whole new ball game. It is a very powerful program, which I will be reviewing for the MONITOR in the next month or so. I just have to find the time to re-train myself into the world of objects instead of fields and files. It works with Windows95 and Windows 3.1 as well as maintains the dBase data base file compatibility. The CPCUG data base was supposed to be completely re-written in Alpha Software's program but that fell through the cracks and so I jumped on VFPW to see what I could do. More later on that.
I had a member give me a call about a new printer that he had purchased. A HP Deskjet 820cse or something similar. It was listed as a Windows printer only. That is correct, it won't work in plain old DOS. The printer is very reasonable priced and works great. To keep the price cheap, HP designed the printer with minimal memory and HP provides you with a program that feeds the information to the printer via the Windows print manager. This way huge graphic files that would choke many minimal memory printers can be printed on the 820 without problem. The HP printer manager feeds the data to the printer slowly and converses with the printer continually.
That precludes this printer being used on a network due to its requirements to constantly communicate with the HP program in Windows.
Clear as mud yet? <G>
Normally printers have to download most of the page into its internal memory, unless it is a dot matrix and then it prints one line or bit at a time. Laser and inkjet printers require more memory in order to store a whole page of information before printing. HP does make a larger network aware printer called a 870Cse professional series and a 870Csi which will work via DOS or Windows and your network. The higher the number and letters, the faster and more expensive. Just a rule of thumb -- adding the word "professional" to the description of a product usually adds to the price. And to be fair, usually it prints faster and has a higher paper tray capacity. My advice is that you can't go wrong in buying HP printers, even though they are more expensive. 99.99% of the software products in the world supports HP printers, out of the box. Also, ribbons, cartridges or toner are available at many more stores. Rich's number 2 rule: Never buy a printer unless the refills are available at the major office supply and computer stores. Or you will at some point be left with an orphan or be paying through the nose for supplies.
OK Enough of this RAMBLINGS, the Editor is waiting for my input. More next month. If you disagree with something I have written then the Editor would like to talk to you as we need other points of view in the MONITOR. How's that for baiting you?v
Rich Schinnell is the program director for
Capital PC User Group
and has served in most of the elected positions at one time or
another in the past 14 years. He is retired from the USN and now
does limited consulting. He can be reached at
schinnel@cpcug.org, (301) 949-9292 in
the evenings from 6-9PM or
the CPCUG office during the day occasionally when he is there to
keep the office staff on their toes. His home WEB page is
http://www.cpcug.org /user/schinnel.
Permission for reproduction in whole or in part is hereby granted to other non-profit and computer user groups for internal, non-profit use, provided credit is given to the Capital PC Monitor and to the author(s) of the reproduced material, and attribution of copyright is included.
Permission is also granted for posting on electronic bulletin board systems, provided credit is given to the Capital PC Monitor and to the author(s) of the reproduced material, and the files are made available in their entirety, without alteration, including this notice.
All other reproduction, other than for personal use, without the prior written permission of the Capital PC User Group is prohibited.
Unless specifically stated, opinions expressed in any article or column are those of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily represent an official position or endorsement of the Capital PC User Group.
Capital PC User Group, Inc.
Plaza East Two
51 Monroe Street
Rockville, Maryland 20850
MIX BBS: (301) 738-9060 (10 MultiTech v.34 modems)
(301) 738-9061 Alternative modem
Office: (301) 762-9372